Optical coherence tomography, or in short OCT, is a measurement technique established in the early 1990s for the non-invasive imaging of interfaces in the bulk of biological tissues or other samples. A full-field OCT setup is built from a microscope combined with a Michelson interferometer, where the mirror in one arm is replaced by the sample. Using white light, which is temporally partially coherent, interference fringes disclose the presence of an interface whenever the lengths of both interferometer arms are nearly equal. Scanning one arm allows for a volumetric reconstruction of all interfaces inside the sample. While the importance of OCT in medicine is indisputable, it is hard to teach students the basic aspects of such technology as most available setups tend to be rather complex. It is our purpose to present a fully functional full-field OCT setup that is stripped-down to its essential components and to promote its use in an undergraduate lab course. The contribution is complemented by a description of the basic theory necessary to understand the working principle of OCT.
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December 2020
PAPERS|
December 01 2020
Full-field optical coherence tomography—An educational setup for an undergraduate lab
Kai Pieper;
Kai Pieper
a)
Institute of Theoretical Solid State Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
, Wolfgang-Gaede-Str. 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
and Institute of Physics and Technical Education, Karlsruhe University of Education
, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
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Gaël Latour;
Gaël Latour
Laboratory for Optics and Biosciences, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, INSERM, Institut Polytechnique de Paris
, Palaiseau, France and UFR Sciences, Université Paris-Saclay, Saint-Aubin, France
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Jens Küchenmeister;
Jens Küchenmeister
b)
Thorlabs GmbH
, Münchner Weg 1, 85232 Bergkirchen, Germany
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Antje Bergmann;
Antje Bergmann
Institute of Theoretical Solid State Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
, Wolfgang-Gaede-Str. 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
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Roman Dengler;
Roman Dengler
Institute of Physics and Technical Education, Karlsruhe University of Education
, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
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Carsten Rockstuhl
Carsten Rockstuhl
Institute of Theoretical Solid State Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
, Wolfgang-Gaede-Str. 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
and Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
, P.O. Box 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany
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a)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
b)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
c)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
Am. J. Phys. 88, 1132–1139 (2020)
Article history
Received:
August 14 2019
Accepted:
July 21 2020
Citation
Kai Pieper, Gaël Latour, Jens Küchenmeister, Antje Bergmann, Roman Dengler, Carsten Rockstuhl; Full-field optical coherence tomography—An educational setup for an undergraduate lab. Am. J. Phys. 1 December 2020; 88 (12): 1132–1139. https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0001755
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